Katie Hopkins 'dropped' from This Morning after thousands sign petition

05 DECEMBER 2013
ITV has confirmed it has "no plans" for former Apprentice contestant Katie Hopkins to appear on This Morning. It follows a petition calling for the controversial commentator to be banned from any future TV appearances.

More than 85,000 people signed the online petition following Katie's ill-timed tweet about Scottish life expectancy in the wake of the Glasgow helicopter crash.

Although she later apologised and clarified that her tweet referred to an NHS report, her post sparked outrage.

The petition read, "On the 30th of November 2013, Scotland was still in shock and trying to come to terms with a horrible crash that took the lives of innocent people.

"Within 24 hours of this happening Katie Hopkins posted vile remarks on Twitter about how long the people of Scotland live for.

"We the undersigned are sick and tired of ITV and Channel 5 giving her airtime and want her banned from all TV shows on your channels."

ITV responded in a statement, saying, "We have no plans for Katie Hopkins to appear on This Morning at this present time."

Mum-of-three Katie has become well known for her controversial — and often confrontational — views. Most recently, she clashed with Peaches Geldof as the two women appeared on This Morning to debate Attachment Parenting.

She has also made waves with her opinions on overweight children, school mums and red-haired children — and became embroiled in a heated debate with This Morning host Holly Willoughby when she said she judged children with "lower class names".

"I think you can tell a great deal from a name," said 38-year-old Katie. "For me, there's certain names that I hear and I think 'urgh'.

"For me, a name is a shortcut of finding out what class a child comes from and makes me ask, 'Do I want my children to play with them?'

"When I hear screeched across the playground, 'Tyler! Come back 'ere.' It's the Tylers, the Charmains, the Chantelles, the Chardonnays…"

She added, "There's a whole set of things that go with children like that, who are quite a disruptive influence in school and that's why I don't like those kind of children.

"I tend to think that children who have intelligent names tend to have fairly intelligent parents and they make much better playdates for my children.

"We are really time short in this world and we need shortcuts to make decisions. It's very effective."